There's nothing the school can do.Latisha Robinson, a black
eighth-grader in Elk Grove, California

You've got to have to want
to do better.Kiarra Gibson, her classmate

The student body of Cedarbrook Middle
School in a Philadelphia suburb is one-third
black, two-thirds white. The town has
a very low poverty rate, good schools,
and a long-established black middle class.
But an eighth-grade advanced algebra
class that a reporter visited in June
2001 contained not a single black student.
The class in which the teacher was explaining
that the 2 in 21 stands for 20, however,
was 100 percent black. A few black students
were taking accelerated English, but
no whites were sitting in the English
class that was learning to identify verbs.

The Cedarbrook picture is by no means
unique. It is all too familiar, and even
worse in the big-city schools that most
black and Hispanic youngsters attend.
This is an American tragedy and a national
emergency for which there are no good
excuses.

The racial gap in academic achievement
is an educational crisis, but it is also
the main source of ongoing racial inequality.
And racial inequality is America's great
unfinished business, the wound that remains
unhealed. Thus, this is a book about
education, but it also addresses the
central civil rights issue of our time:
our failure to provide first-class education
for black and Hispanic students, in both
cities and suburbs.

The black high school graduation rate
has more than doubled since 1960. And
blacks attend college at a rate that
is higher than it was for whites just
two decades ago. But the good news ends
there. The gap in academic achievement
that we see today is actually worse than
it was fifteen years ago. In the 1970s
and through most of the 1980s, it was
closing, but around 1988 it began to
widen, with no turnaround in sight.

Today, at age 17 the typical black or
Hispanic student is scoring less well
on the nation's most reliable tests than
at least 80 percent of his or her white
classmates. In five of the seven subjects
tested by the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), a majority
of black students perform in the lowest
category -- Below Basic. The result:
By twelfth grade, African Americans are
typically four years behind white and
Asian students, while Hispanics are doing
only a tad better than black students.
These students are finishing high school
with a junior high education.

Students who have equal skills and knowledge
will have roughly equal earnings. That
was not always true, but it is today.
Schooling has become the key to racial
equality. No wonder that Robert Moses,
a luminous figure in the civil rights
revolution of the 1960s, is convinced
that "the absence of math literacy
in urban and rural communities throughout
this country is an issue as urgent as
the lack of registered Black voters in
Mississippi was in 1961." Algebra,
he believes, is "the gatekeeper
of citizenship."

Literacy, too, is a "gatekeeper," and
the deadline for learning is alarmingly
early. "For many students...the
die is cast by eighth grade. Students
without the appropriate math and reading
skills by that grade are unlikely to
acquire them by the end of high school...," a
U.S. Department of Education study has
concluded.

Race has famously been called the "American
dilemma." But since the mid-1960s,
racial equality has also been an American
project. An astonish-ing, peaceful revolution
in the status of blacks and the state
of race relations has transformed the
country. And yet too few Americans have
recognized and acknowledged the stubborn
inequalities that only better schools
can address.

Even civil rights groups have long averted
their gaze from the disquieting reality. "You
can have a hunch that black students
are not doing as well, but some of this
was surprising," A. V. Fleming,
president of the Urban League in Fort
Wayne, Indiana, said, as the picture
of low black achievement began to emerge
in the late 1990s. In Elk Grove, California,
an affluent suburb of Sacramento, black
parents were shocked, angry, and in tears
when they learned of the low test scores
of their kids. "People know that
this is an important issue, and they
don't know how to talk about it," said
Philip Moore, the principal of the local
middle school, who is black himself.

For too long, the racial gap in academic
performance was treated not only by civil
rights leaders, but by the media, and
even by scholars, as a dirty secret --
something to whisper about behind closed
doors. As if it were racist to say we
have a problem: Black and Hispanic kids,
on average, are not doing well in school.

Suddenly, however, this shamefully ignored
issue has moved to the front and center
of the education stage. In part, the
new attention is simply a response to
an altered economic reality. A half century
ago, an eighth-grade dropout could get
a secure and quite well-paid job at the
Ford Motor Company or U.S. Steel. Today,
the Honda plant in Ohio does not hire
people who cannot pass a test of basic
mathematical skills.

Demographic change, too, has forced
Americans to pay attention to an educational
and racial catastrophe in their midst.
Fifty years ago, Hispanic children were
no more than 2 percent of the school
population. Today, a third of all American
students are black or Latino. In California,
Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and
Texas white schoolchildren have become
a numerical minority. These numbers,
in themselves, drive home the urgency
of educating all children.

The unprecedented sense of urgency is
unmistakable in No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), the 2001 version of the nation's
omnibus 1965 Elementary and Secondary
Education Act. The central aim of the
revised statute, as its preamble states
boldly, is "to close the achievement
gap...so that no child is left behind." Closing
the gap is the core purpose of the legislation
-- and the test of its eventual success.

Thus, the act requires all states to
test children in grades 3-8 and report
scores broken down by race, ethnicity,
and other demographic characteristics
associated with educational disadvantage.
Each group must show significant annual
progress. Affluent districts will no
longer be able to coast along, hiding
their lower-performing black and Hispanic
students in overall averages that make
their schools look good. A bucket of
very cold water has been poured on educators
-- and particularly those who have been
quite complacent. NCLB has been an overdue
attention-getter. At a well-attended
national meeting on education in September
2002, the audience was asked to name
the most important new policy requirement
in No Child Left Behind; closing the
racial and ethnic achievement gap was
the clear winner.

Indifference to minority children who
arrive in kindergarten already behind
and continue to flounder is no longer
an option for schools. The problem has
been acknowledged -- and thus must now
be addressed. Racial equality will remain
a dream as long as blacks and Hispanics
learn less in school than whites and
Asians. If black youngsters remain second-class
students, they will be second-class citizens
-- a racially identifiable and enduring
group of have-nots.

Certain assumptions and arguments run
through this book. We list some of the
most important here as a guide to our
readers, with references to the chapters
in which they first appear.

• Before we discuss remedies, we
must outline the problem (which we do
in Chapter 1). Only if the full magnitude
of the racial gap is understood will
Americans begin to appreciate the need
for a radical rethinking of what counts
today as school reform. The racial gap
is not an IQ story; this is not a book
about innate intelligence. The bad news
that we discuss simply means we must
work harder and smarter at delivering
better education.

• Test scores matter (Chapter 2
argues). They tell us precisely what
we need to know if we have any hope of
reforming education and closing the racial
gap in academic achievement. Good tests
measure the knowledge and skills that
demanding jobs and college courses require.
When black and Latino students leave
high school barely knowing how to read,
their future -- and that of the nation
-- is in jeopardy. Our sense of danger
and moral outrage should be particularly
strong when so many of these students
are African Americans -- members of a
group that suffered the brutality of
slavery, legally enforced segregation,
and racial exclusion.

• Terrific schools that serve highly
disadvantaged minority kids do exist.
There just aren't enough of them. (We
take a very close look at some of them
in Chapters 3 and 4). These schools are
not waiting until the day social and
economic disparities disappear. "No
Excuses" is their relentless message.
Every student is expected to work hard
to acquire the skills and knowledge that
tests measure. These are schools with
great leaders and great teachers who
have high academic and behavioral standards,
and the schools provide nonstop learning
through longer school days, weeks, and
years.

• These schools also aim to transform
the culture of their students -- as that
culture affects academic achievement
(we argue in Chapter 4). "We are
fighting a battle involving skills and
values," David Levin, founder of
the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx,
New York, has explained. This is a fight
that all good schools must engage in.
Those we came to admire set social norms
that create effective learning environments.
Students learn to speak politely to the
principal, teachers, and strangers; they
learn to dress neatly, to arrive at school
on time, to pay attention in class, finish
homework, and never waste time. Teachers
work hard to instill the desire, discipline,
and dedication -- the will to succeed
-- that will enable disadvantaged youth
to climb the American ladder of opportunity.
These are essential ingredients in the
definition of effective education for
high-need kids.

• When it comes to academic success,
members of some ethnic and racial groups
are culturally luckier than others. "Culture" is
a loose and slippery term, and we do
not use it to imply a fixed set of group
traits, but rather values, attitudes,
and skills that are shaped and reshaped
by environment. Asians (at whom we look
in Chapter 5) are typically more deeply
engaged in academic work than their peers,
cut classes less often, and enroll in
Advanced Placement courses at triple
the white rate. The explanation: family
expectations. These relative newcomers
belong to the group that has most intensely
embraced the traditional American work
ethic. But their story contains good
news: Hard work is a culturally transferable
trait. Their success can be replicated.
Culture matters, but it is also open
to change.

• Family messages don't always
mesh well with the objectives of schools.
The Hispanics who are flooding into American
schools today (the subject of Chapter
6) are very much like Italian immigrants
circa 1910. For those Italian peasants,
school was not a high priority; they
expected their children to take a job
as soon as possible. But over the generations,
academic success rose in importance;
time had a salutary effect. Hispanics
are also making real gains over generations
-- gains obscured by a continuing influx
of new immigrants. There are thus historical
and demographic reasons why so many Latino
children are not faring well academically.
Those reasons do not let schools off
the hook; they can do better. Some cultures
are academically advantageous, but neither
poverty nor culture is educational destiny.

• Black academic underachievement
(the subject of Chapter 7) has deep historical
roots. The first signs of underachievement
appear very early in the life of black
children, and although scholars have
not been able to pinpoint the precise
reasons, they can identify some of the
risk factors that seem to be limiting
their intellectual development. Among
them: low birth weight, single-parent
households, and birth to a very young
mother. African-American children not
only arrive in school less academically
prepared; they also tend to be less ready
to conform to behavioral demands. They
watch an extraordinary amount of television
-- essential to belonging to the peer
culture, they say. The process of connecting
black children to the world of academic
achievement isn't easy in the best of
educational settings. But the good schools
we describe in Chapters 3 and 4 show
that it can be done. Not without fundamental
change in American public education,
however.

• Greater school funding could
be put to good use; racially integrated
schools are desirable; and teacher quality
is a real problem in too many schools
-- particularly in those serving the
children who most need an excellent education.
But the usual reasons given for the racial
achievement gap -- a shortage of money,
racial isolation, markedly worse teachers
by the usual criteria of education school
credentials, and the like -- do not in
fact explain the skills and knowledge
gap between the average Asian or white
student and the typical black or Hispanic
youngster. (This is the argument we make
in Chapters 8, 9, and 10.) It does not
cost more to raise academic and behavioral
standards, and money, per se, is no panacea.
Additional funding poured into the existing
system will not solve the problem of
underachieving black and Hispanic students.
Schools are not becoming "resegregated";
they cannot, in any case, magically become
racially balanced given existing residential
patterns. Most important, what matters
in a school is not the racial mix but
the academic culture and the quality
of the teachers, which is not likely
to improve unless the rules governing
hiring, firing, and salaries, as well
as working conditions, are changed.

• Since 1965, the federal government
has poured money into Title I and Head
Start in an effort to close the poverty
-- and, indirectly, the racial -- gap
in academic achievement. The returns
have been crushingly disappointing (the
subject of Chapter 11). Head Start remains
the right idea; whether it can be translated
into a truly effective program remains
uncertain. In 2001 the secretary of education
described Title I as a $125 billion program
with "virtually nothing to show
for it." When the provision was
first being debated in 1965, Senator
Robert F. Kennedy turned to the U.S.
commissioner of education and said: "Look,
I want to change this bill because it
doesn't have any way of measuring those
damn educators like you...." Kennedy
got his way only on paper. Measuring
schools by student results goes against
the grain of the traditional educational
culture, but the newest revision of Title
I -- in 2001 -- insists on it. It's a
long-overdue change. Student results
are the educational bottom line.

• Starting in the late 1980s, a
movement for testing, standards, and
accountability began to sweep the states,
and in January 2002, the president signed
into law the 2001 No Child Left Behind
Act. (Chapter 12 reviews this history.)
Closing the racial gap is its central
aim. Will mandatory testing, scores broken
down by race and ethnicity, an insistence
on "adequate yearly progress," and
various sanctions for poor performance
finally level the academic playing field?
If the record of two model states, Texas
and North Carolina, is any measure, the
prospects are not good. The much-celebrated
efforts in those two states did improve
the knowledge and skills of all students,
but the racial gap did not narrow. White
scores went up and black scores went
up, but the difference between them remained
about as wide. Closing that gap is the
acid test of educational reform.

• Americans are educational reformers,
but in fact little has changed despite
much activity, particularly in the last
quarter century. That's not surprising. "Reformers" have
had limited appetite for true reform,
and, in any case, the roadblocks to fundamental
change are formidable. (Chapter 13 reviews
those obstacles.) The teaching profession
does not reward imaginative, ambitious,
competitive innovators. Big-city superintendents,
as well as principals, operate in a straitjacket.
The politics of school reform often have
little to do with kids. Most important,
the enormous power of teachers unions
stops almost all real change in its tracks.
No Child Left Behind was envisioned as
a means of circumventing these obstacles
to reform. It contains promising steps
in the right direction, but closing the
racial gap in academic achievement will
demand more. It is no accident that the
revolutionary schools we describe in
Chapters 3 and 4 are outside the traditional
public system. These are schools that
students, parents, and staff have chosen,
and choice is integral to their success.
The forces of opposition to more school
choice are powerful; on the other hand,
the lure of charter schools and perhaps
vouchers may prove irresistible if No
Child Left Behind fails to close the
racial gap in academic achievement, as
we predict it will.

In its call for drastic action to overcome
a national crisis, this is a book with
a tough message. That message is directed
not only to schools, but also to students
and their families. In our epigraph,
Latisha Robinson is wrong, but her classmate
Kiarra Gibson is right. In fact, schools
can do much to close the racial gap;
students, however, have to do their part:
coming to school on time, attending every
class, listening with their full attention,
burning the midnight oil.

A letter to The New York Times in June
2002 asked: "Why bother to learn
in school if there is no advantage, no
opportunity after, and nobody cares?" No
advantage? No opportunity? Today? It's
a familiar but misguided and dangerous
claim -- particularly dangerous when
delivered to school-age kids making often
irrevocable decisions about who they
are and where they're going. Pessimism
is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The best schools deliver quite a different
message. At North Star Academy in Newark,
New Jersey, the students in the morning
circle often chant answers -- with claps
and stomps and fists held high -- to
a series of questions posed by one of
the codirectors: Why are you here? To
get an education. And what will you have
to do? Work! Hard! Work, work, work hard!
Work! Hard! Work, work, work hard! And
what will you need? Self-discipline Why?
To be the master of my own destiny!

You can become the master of your own
destiny: It's the most important message
that schools like North Star deliver.
A sixth-grader defined success "as
having the freedom to decide what you
want to do in life instead of someone
choosing your path, because when someone
chooses your path, you're going to get
something probably that you don't want."

For too many years, too few black and
Hispanic youngsters -- particularly those
in urban public schools -- have acquired
the skills to choose their own path.
It is time to bring an end to that heartbreaking
story. But a new beginning will require
radical change in America's schools.
Our hope, in writing this book, is to
do our small part in turning that vision
into an idea whose time has come.